The Non-Starter

On writing, excuses, and the man who stayed in the truck.

Especially When It’s Cold

Colin

Frost accumulated on my beard. I stood up from being hunched over an electrical duct pulling wire through what seemed like a mile of conduit. I looked over at Al. “Where the hell is Colin? I thought he was supposed to be helping me pull wire?”
Al looked at me and shook his head. “He’s in the truck.”
“WHAT?! WHY?!”
Al stopped what he was doing. “Because it’s cold?” His seeming question was more a statement of frustration. “Colin is a non-starter.”
I chuckled. “Are we paying him?”
No answer.

Always a Distraction

“Am I a writer because I write? Or do I write because I’m a writer?” It’s one of those double-weird questions that I contemplate when I am on my back patio drinking wine. Just drunk enough to not really write anything, but not drunk enough to come up with an adequate answer to the question. But I can answer one question accurately. I do enjoy the writing process. So what does that make me?

I spend my days in the IT world. Sat at a laptop with very big monitors. I go home and the last item on my chore list is to get out my laptop. You would think that getting out my computer would be the very last thing I want to do after spending my ten-hour day staring at one, but I have become obsessed with my AI assistant ‘Claude.’ Specifically ‘Claude Code’. I’ve had three websites sitting around in their respective domains in my Amazon Web Services account. Doing nothing. So when I discovered Claude Code could set these up for me I’ve been a maniac about working on them.

Let’s be clear, I’m not a ‘coder’. But Claude is, and simply asking Claude to do stuff for me and they get done has been more than interesting, it’s been mind-blowing. So for the past four weeks or so I’ve been pounding away at getting these sites going.

The Field Almanac

I have, in particular, this project with which I have struggled for about a year. The concept started extremely small and tight. It has since grown. Dramatically. Trying to wrap my head around the metastasizing behemoth has been like mapping a coastline that won’t stand still. Sure, you can see where the waves break, but each time you draw the line, more sand is swept off, or more sand is deposited.

It was this part of the website I was having Claude work on. The goal was to have the site automatically pull my Substack posts and feature them on my projects front page. “Retrieve my most recent Substack posts, and put them on the main page,” I typed. Claude complied.
Wait, this can’t be right. “I think you misunderstood, the MOST RECENT posts.” “Those are the most recent posts,” Claude quipped back.
Nah. You gotta be kidding.

I logged into my Substack, pored through my article lists. Sure enough. The most recent post. January 25th, 2026. My heart sank. My inner voice spoke up, pretty rudely if you ask me, and asked, “I thought you were a writer?” Another inner voice answered back before I could deal with the question and simply stated, “Non-starter.” My inner voice, I am convinced, is schizophrenic, and sometimes has miles-long conversations, often without my involvement.

The Excuses

I’ve been busy, I’ve been working, it’s too late in the day, it’s too early in the morning. I’ve been working on other projects.

We are much more productive living under the Sword of Damocles. If a writer knew the bank was coming after his house because he is nine months behind on his mortgage I could guarantee that writer would spend a helluva lot more time, tapping out voluminous pages of prose. But there’s always that ONE chore we find an hour and a half worth of stuff to do just to avoid.

Writing is work, and there’s always a good reason to not work. Especially if it doesn’t make your car payment.

Those of us with hobbies that require effort spend the majority of our day pouring our energies into whatever pays the bills. For me, it’s behind two very large monitors at the Administrative Offices of the Courts. The easiest thing for me to talk myself out of after a ten-hour day is more work.

Go Write

So I have to get creative and swizzle some time, anywhere I can. Everybody does when it comes to these weird passions. The person who gets home from a long day at work has to force themselves to get on a bike for a ride, put on the gloves and walk to the garden, or put on the gym shorts before picking up the weights.

A writer with no posts since January is just as cold as the non-starter sitting in the truck. At least Colin got paid.

Somewhere between a distraction and a starter is a writer with no posts. At some point you have to get out of the truck. Especially when it’s cold.

GO WRITE!